Ros Canter and Lordships Graffalo won Defender Burghley again in 2025, and he became the first horse to win both Burghley and Badminton twice.
Ros Canter and Lordships Graffalo retained the Defender Burghley title at Burghley House near Stamford, where the trials ran from Thursday 4 to Sunday 7 September 2025.
Horse trials have run at Burghley since 1961. That year the 6th Marquess of Exeter, an Olympic gold medallist and a member of the IOC, stepped in after a three-day event planned at Harewood House was cancelled over suspected foot and mouth disease. No other international site has staged as many championships, a record ten, among them the first World Championship in 1966.
Burghley is one of the seven events the FEI ranks among the world’s leading three-day trials, and one leg of the Grand Slam of Eventing with Kentucky and Badminton. The 2025 week followed its classic shape: two days of dressage, then a Saturday cross country of more than four miles and 30 fences, then Sunday’s jumping on a course by Paul Connor.
Canter closed the week with a clear final round on the 13-year-old Lordships Graffalo, known at home as Walter. He became the first horse to win both Burghley and Badminton twice, and only the third to win Burghley in successive years, after Priceless and Avebury. Austin O’Connor finished second on the 16-year-old grey Colorado Blue, Ireland’s best Burghley result since 1963. Harry Meade, the world number one, was third on Cavalier Crystal for the third year running.